Leaning Out - Week 9

My new schedule continues to be soul-feeding. I think the last time I had this kind of spaciousness in my life was in my twenties, maybe in college, when I still lived at home, and my "job" was reading great literature and then writing papers that called forth new levels of understanding, not just of the books and poems I studied, but also of myself as I related to those works.

Then, as now, much of my time was a meditation. I just didn't know it. Writing is, after all, very much a way of witnessing our own thoughts. So much of the time I only have a vague intuition about things until I write them down. This is also very much how therapy works. Clients begin to understand themselves better as they say out loud the things that have been floating around their minds. Making thoughts more concrete brings clarity. It helps if the words are met with kindness and interest.

Seventeen days ago, I was in Los Angeles, having a socially distant visit with my sister and her family. Checking email, a note from my friend and publisher, Jeff, announced that my first volume of poems was live on Amazon. It was the day before my 56th birthday. I had started writing poetry in college, at the tender age of 20. It was wild to have this book arrive some 36 years later. 

I could not have done it any sooner. Writing in my twenties was fraught with anxiety and insecurity. If people responded well, I felt validated. If not, I was doused with shame. This is a terrible way to make art. Every creation becomes a plea for approval.

The inside work I have done all these years to love myself no matter what allowed me to write for the sake of writing, for the love of finding just the right image or rhyme, to tickle my brain and touch my heart by putting pen to paper and waiting for the muse, who I like to call my "inner narrator" to begin dictating.

I am so delighted to share the book with anyone who finds resonance. And I'm fine that many will not. Poetry, of all things, is not exactly popular these days. But it is so much fun to find my fellow word-nerds and geek out together.

But I digress. These stretches of time could so easily be filled now with marketing the book. At least three people have asked me, so how are you going to sell it? Just the question creates tension, as I feel my muscles readying to pounce on some opportunity as though I were playing musical chairs and the seats were becoming scarce. 

I remind myself that this is the farthest thing from the truth. I have taken 36 years to put this work in the world because that's how long it took. I have an ongoing agreement with my publisher that neither of us pressures the other to get anything done. And still the book is here, solid, real. 

I trust the same will happen with marketing. I've made an author page on FB and ordered copies to share with local booksellers. I think that's more than enough for right now. Maybe, when the time feels right, I will do a virtual reading. Maybe serendipity will bless me with a friend who wants to spread the word, just as serendipity led me to Jeff who made the publication process such a dream.

I am writing new poems - including one below that I penned at UCLA, my alma mater, sitting just where I used to write in my twenties, which was such a kick. I'm writing my non-fiction, how to love yourself/memoir, practicing the same gentleness, never pressuring myself to write, but still finding myself drawn to the computer on nearly all of my non-working days, letting what's in my head become concrete, knowing that later, I will find a shape and a structure, maybe with the help of a genius editor I haven't met yet.

Today I felt pulled to do very little. I spent most of the day in my backyard, enjoying the (finally) crisp, fall air, reading Leigh Bardugo novels and watching hummingbirds, towhees, house finches, and blue jays snacking at the feeders I've gotten, now that we are cat-less. Between stretches of reading, I cooked and ate, did a little restorative yoga, and not much else. 

I suspect that tomorrow, or after another day of restorative puttering and reading, I will feel an urge to write again, maybe a poem, maybe more of the book. But the amazing thing is living within these long pockets of time without any pressure or stress, following whatever whim comes along. It's like being a kid again.

Here's my poem, written at UCLA, the day before my birthday along with illustrative photo. I hope you enjoy it, but no worries if it's not your cup of tea.

This is My Breast

The sculptor did not name her.
Clad in white, presiding over a pale blue pool,
we christened her: This is My Breast,
patron saint of meeting places.
 
The bells tolled on the hour
signaling convergence.
The emergence of friendly faces
between classes, rallying
 
for a march on the coffee house;
for an impromptu poetry reading;
for a date to sit on the quad,
calculating the angle of the boys’
 
behinds, and surmising the size
of their shoes. We wore mid-thigh skirts
and sky-high heels, clinging tops that cried,
“This is my breast! This is my breast!”
 
As though we too were nameless.